If Grace’s life in these years was full of remarkable developments — buying a house, completing her masters, changing jobs — she was soon to add another. On May 28, 1971, she married again. William D. “Dub” White was a longtime friend and faculty colleague at St. Andrews. Grace wore the blue chiffon gown I’d worn to my brother’s wedding. Dub wore a tux his sister had given him, first owned by her late husband, Jim Reeves — the velvet-voiced Gentleman Jim.

In July, fresh off their honeymoon in Puerto Rico, Grace flew to Iowa City for the much-anticipated seminar on Richard Wright, whose work so compelled her and whose life she was researching.

Then, in August, another development: Grace was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a radical mastectomy.

Woven through the coming months would be the medical challenges and the work she was determined to do despite them. Grace would write to us that she was feeling better; then something would appear in her hip. She’d say she’d been walking with a stylish cane but no longer needed it. Then a lesion would show up in her shoulder.

In September, she wrote a friend: “I am teaching two classes but doing very little counseling until I feel stronger. Each day, almost, I see an improvement, but it seems slow when I want to do so many things and all I feel like doing is lying down after my classes.”

Later that month, a letter from the academic press at the University of Missouri about her proposed article on Richard Wright brought stirring news: “What you describe — the entire route of it — sounds most exciting. In fact, your ‘Retracing Wright’s Footsteps in Memphis’ is perhaps our most exciting possibility to date (and most original). And I think that you are surely gallant, in view of your illness, to push on with the project.”

In letter after letter that fall, Grace did indeed push on, searching out people who had known Wright in Memphis, pinning down addresses where he’d lived, determining where he had worked. Then, in an October 1971 letter to the National Council of Teachers of English, she asked with great regret to be relieved of her responsibility as a discussion leader on curricular innovation at their upcoming convention in Las Vegas. She was due back at Duke for treatment.

In January of 1972 for “winter term” she and Dub went to Nashville, staying with my brother and sister-in-law. Grace was doing research at Fisk University for a possible textbook on African-American writers. I came from my cub-reporting job in Colorado Springs to join them, bearing clippings. She wrote to a friend, “You would be really proud of G’s newspaper work — by the quality of her writing, by her beat (City Hall) and by her special features.”

In a March 1972 letter to me, Grace writes that she is very much looking forward to seeing my sister and her family during spring break. Afterward, Dub and she will take the train to New York. “Classes resume April 4. That week on Friday I return to Duke and again the following Wed-Fri. By that time maybe changes of some kind will be observable.”

A letter to a colleague reports that “I have not walked on crutches since I returned to teach the spring term. But my shoulder developed a small lesion and I had to go back every day for a week to take cobalt in that area. I return to Duke this week. The shoulder trouble has evidently not cleared up but seems to have spread under the arm and in certain spots across my back. Now the possibility of cancer appearing looms larger in my mind than it once did. I will be relieved to find out something definitive this week.”

Later in the spring, she wrote to a friend: “I am getting along very well although I take 5 lethal anti-cancer drugs daily and/or weekly. You would be interested to know that these are drugs developed during World War II for use in chemical warfare. Isn’t there an ironic poetic justice in this? Of course they are a shot in the dark and whether they will contain my cancer is knowable only through time.”

She adds that they plan to leave St. Andrews right after commencement for Nashville, where she has a grant to pursue more research at Fisk for her proposed textbook. They expect to be in England in July for a meeting Dub is to be part of.

Next in the letters file appears one of those periodic reflections Grace wrote to herself over the years — a rather curious one. It must have been written shortly after her marriage to Dub, though it’s not dated: “As I look at myself today, I find I can gain perspective by looking at the four men who have influenced what I now am. My father, a large, warm, much-liked, outspoken native Texan gave me a sense of pride in who I am and a challenge as to what I might become… My former husband, father of my three children, was brought up in a home conditioned to ‘the woman’s place is…’. My son: Our relationship is a very good one — warm, honest reaching-out, open. For many years it was tense. I am thankful he had the strength to stand up for who he was and that I was able finally to see that I was hurting our relationship because of my own lack of clarity about his needs and my expectations… My present husband, who accepts my abilities, and we share all aspects of achievements.

“As I think of my future life, I do so now in a freer way — free from the restrictions imposed by society or from my own interpretation of them. I understand now that my own self-concepts were both positively and negatively affected by men, and that I have both lost and gained myself.”

In her last letter to me, Grace proudly enclosed what she called “THE article” — her deeply researched piece on Richard Wright’s Memphis years. “If you can find time, take 15 minutes to snap out a critical response. I’m interested in your evaluation because I respect your knowledge and skill, and also because I think this is written as a journalist rather than as a literary scholar.”

“My thoughts go out to you often, hoping you are finding your way through the things we talked about. I am happy that you have such a productive job; that is one of the most important things in life, I know.“

By early summer, changes had indeed become observable, and not for the better. After a long hospital stay, Grace asked the good doctors at Duke to send her home — along with a great deal of pain medication.

She died on Sunday evening, July 16, 1972. We were all at her bedside.

Her funeral, at Laurinburg Presbyterian Church, brought the little North Carolina town together — high school and college, black and white, young and old. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” followed upon “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” The minister ended his remarks by saying, “When grief is done, and we are freer than we are today, have a party, and invite people you might not usually think to invite. Make them welcome, and give them a chance to experience the grace inherent in such an act and the love which transcends lifestyle, appearance, age, politics, race, education and station in life. That will honor, and that would have pleased, Grace.”

She was 58 years old. She’d had just six years of that new life she’d struggled to reach — along with the rich, complicated years before.

On the eve of her marriage to Jim, Grace had written a long list of goals she had set for herself, concluding: “These are the things I want in my life. If I carry out my aims, I should be a Grace McSpadden I can be proud of.”

Damned if she hadn’t done it.

In the spring of 1966, Jim drove to Tennessee to visit his mother. He left this note for Grace: “When the deadline on my contract was up, I found that I could not sign it. I turned it in yesterday unsigned with a note of resignation. It seemed the only thing to do.” Weeks later, he found a job at Jacksonville University. He’d need to be in Florida by August 15.

In early June, back in Chapel Hill to work on her masters, Grace typed a four-page document to herself: “Why I Want a Divorce — An Effort to Get My Thoughts in a Focus Beyond Emotionalism.”

Life with Jim, she writes, “for both him and me, has become intolerable. We do more to hurt each other, to keep each other from functioning as normal human and productive beings, than we are able to do to encourage and help each other.” She enumerates the causes: “Our different attitudes about almost every subject,” her view that Jim “is always looking for something he’ll never find, and that he thinks I am not the kind of wife he needs and wants, and that if I would only change, things would straighten out.

“In view of this constant friction and tension, there is no peace, no happiness, no companionship — just day by day wondering what will cause unhappiness, tension, misery — and trying to avoid it if at all possible.”

She writes of her teaching job “which came to me out of the blue and yet which I think my whole life was preparing me for.” This “is a life saver, something that gives me personal satisfaction, a feeling that I am worth something as a person and that I am able to give something of my self, my talents, abilities, training.” The job has enabled her to be “less tensely involved in my personal unhappiness.”

Also: “The fact that Geneva is now leaving home to go to college frees me from the responsibility which has held me in the family situation in spite of personal torment and humiliation.

“I am aware that my children may turn against me, that I shall be considered a failure, that I am putting myself out with nothing for my old age, and that my loneliness will be a constant emotion I shall have to face. But the choice is not too difficult to make when viewed opposite that situation which now exists in our marriage — a hopeless, irremediable one, I am convinced.

“Our married life is founded on illusion and I think it is only his pride that makes him want to go on, and that it wouldn’t last any longer than the first few months of the situation which he got in Florida.”

The next day, she goes to see a lawyer.

At the end of July, she writes to Jim, saying she wants a separation. He reacts strongly to her “severe” letter. He writes that he wants the marriage to continue. They must both try harder. She should come with him to Florida.

In early August, they meet at a lawyer’s office. At the beginning of the session, Jim repeats his protest. Very shortly thereafter, he “became very businesslike. He had prepared eight questions, very good ones.” By the end of the session, Jim and Grace had agreed on the terms of a separation and had begun talking about what he should take with him from the house they had been renting in Laurinburg.

Grace later wrote to a friend: “The decision had been a long time in coming and was a very difficult one to make and to accept. Now that the break has actually come, there is a definite sense of severance. When Jim signed the papers in the lawyer’s office I felt it, and as I walked out by myself, I realized the utter desolation and loneliness that can come following such a drastic step. Yet I prefer this to the ugliness and hopelessness of the other.”

Finally, she writes, “I really think all the children will find both Jim and me more enjoyable when we are not in that farcical situation. And perhaps Jim will become the able fine teacher everyone thinks he is except himself.”

Grace now undertakes, in visits and phone calls and letters, to explain her actions to her children. To my sister, she writes that, after the session culminating in the separation, “Needless to say I felt bereft, full of a real sense of loss, felt a rush of the loneliness I’ll feel over and over, but also I recognized that I could stand those better than I could stand more despair and the constant unrelieved misery of trying to be something I am not and trying to live in a situation where neither of us was doing the other any good at all.”

Grace told me the news in person, during a weekend visit to Chapel Hill. She told N. of my reaction: “She quite calmly said, ‘I am not surprised, I almost knew it was coming, but of course I am sorry you feel that you have to.’ I am sure she was hurt more than she showed, but she was sincere and accepting without committing herself in any way.”

At the end of my summer job, I drove with Dad in the family’s ancient, oil-burning Chevy to Jacksonville. At the big-box store across from his apartment, I bought him basic cooking utensils. Back in Laurinburg, I packed up my belongings. Grace and I drove to Boston. She dropped me off at college — and headed back to the freer life she had envisioned in that document in June.

Jim applied for a divorce in Florida, where the residency requirement was shorter. It became final in May of 1967. Their complicated 30-year marriage was over.

Hot Springs set a high bar; the Memphis years fell far short. Grace missed Hot Springs — its beauty, its diverse community offerings and her starring roles in them. Jim was growing steadily unhappier — with his work, with his life, with his wife. Grace struggled to find her way in the marriage, resentment melding with efforts to understand. Her determined hopefulness helped. So did increasing success in her work.

In February 1958, she writes to her friend Mary Louise that the family’s upcoming move to Memphis was “rather sudden,” but that Jim had been “so anxious to move, feeling for about a year that it would be best to make a change.” In a letter to my sister, now a college freshman, Grace regrets that N. won’t be able to come home to Hot Springs again. “I am sorry, and I ache inside for you and A. and for myself, too, because I love this place and my life here, except for the misery your father has gone through. He seems to think he will be happier and looks forward to ‘a new start,’ and I hope it will work out as he imagines.”

Two months after the move, Grace writes to a Hot Springs friend: “To the unspoken question between us about how things are, I can only say, somewhat better, somewhat worse, sometimes the same. Enigma? Well, that’s what my life was there, wasn’t it? However, I have become more and more convinced that the Lord will work things out.”

As for Jim’s new church — Shady Grove Presbyterian, “At the installation service the minister who gave the charge to Jim avoided the usual clichés and admonished Jim to ‘do something which we all have to do and remember: whenever the going gets rough, whenever a committee or session or diaconate committee or any kind of meeting seems to go in a different direction from what you think is right; whenever people are disagreeing about building or equipping or running the church — at these and countless other times, don’t lose your temper.’”

Grace adds, “His mother was here and she told him the next morning that he should ‘do as that preacher told you to do — don’t get mad so quickly.’”

In a November 1958 letter to Grandmother, Grace writes about some changes she has gone through: “I believe the most important difference now is that I am no longer on the defensive. I can enjoy and appreciate Jim when he is normal and himself; when he is possessed by these demons and tormented by self-doubt and misery, he is not himself. Although I am no angel, I assure you, I have been helped to be far more objective.”

Grace hears a speaker at a downtown event and notes to herself that he helped her “in getting my feelings straightened out. I know how I feel about some fundamental positions in life, but some of them have been buffeted and torn and ridiculed until I had more or less lost my props. Now I can recapture them, but with a difference — a maturity, I hope, born through experience. And no need to apologize or equivocate. They are right for me. No reason to be unyielding or show a lack of understanding for a difference, but just to hold on fast to what I believe.”

She visits my sister at Wellesley, stopping on the way home to see a friend in New York. They went to the Frick and took in “Wild Strawberries.” On Broadway, she saw “Raisin in the Sun” with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee and “J.B.” with Christopher Plummer and Basil Rathbone. On the subway, she “admired the clothes and makeup of many attractive people, intermingled with workingmen, sales clerks, newsboys and people-people.” It was, she wrote: “A real New York time.”

Back home, she writes the two grandmothers: “All the kids made all As this past semester except for a B in conduct from Geneva, our thoroughly normal child.” (Now there’s a dubious honor — one that Grace repeatedly confers on me.)

That “great god and worry — money” shadows them. Her letters are full of buying new retreads, repairing punctures, mufflers about to fall off. As for Jim, “He has been more depressed and low than usual and has threatened more often to leave, saying he couldn’t stand it any longer. It’s always ‘if you will change and do better — or rather now it is ‘if you had changed and done better and been willing to submit and be a wife several years ago, we could have made it.’” Men who are not as smart as he have done better, the same men he went to school with have bigger churches. He has difficulties with the session. He says, “Well, if it happens again, I’m just going to resign and you’ll have to take over yourself. I thought of running away but I’ve decided I’ll at least resign; I’ll do it because of my health and I’ll move the furniture anywhere you want it and then you’re on your own.”

She says since her trip that fall she has faced the situation with less emotionalism, tried to quit running away from “conversations in which he indicts me. Either I listen with some sympathy or else try to point out something he has overlooked. “

In October 1960, Mother is offered $4500 to write a series of primary grade church-school books and teachers’ guides. (Jim is making $6,000 a year.) She accepts. Subsequent letters are full of news of this project, how it consumes and engages her.

She offers Dad the money she’d be making from the first unit “to sit down and write something every day” and to buy a ticket to New York and Boston and go to father-daughter day at Wellesley. He says he has “nothing to write, I’m drained, a few years ago I could have, you have ruined anything I could have done.”

May 1960: Grace writes that Jim “has applied to teach in Baghdad, and is now writing to colleges in CA and to Trinity in San Antonio, wanting to teach philosophy. Although I can hardly face another move and feel sick at heart at what may be taking place, I realize that it may be best for him to get out of the ministry because he has never been more miserable.”

April 1961: “Jim’s trip to Ohio was tiring and he came back with a cold and a discontent which has accompanied him all week. He preached a wonderful lecture-sermon today on ‘The Authority of the Holy Scriptures.’ Sometimes when he feels the worst he comes out with the most thoughtful and deepest sermons.”

July 1961: Jim has written 50 schools and colleges and is now talking with one in San Jose about a temporary one-year job. He wants to go by himself. He insists Grace stay there or wherever she wants to go and get a job and “do your writing too of course.” (She says he thinks she can do that after dinner.) “I think it unwise to begin looking for anything until after he has something signed and sealed and I hope and feel I can take and face whatever emerges. He feels he must get away from this church and family responsibilities and from me. I am faced with an impenetrable wall whenever I try to get through to him because he is convinced that I am responsible for almost all of his misery and unhappiness.

”This summer for me has been a most unusual one. I have had more happiness and more unhappiness during these months than at any time I can remember. I find myself searching for deep meanings, going out to meet situations, staying sensitive to what is happening and have a great awareness of life itself and of my own part and responsibility in it than I have heretofore had. Life is so full of many things, life calls to us to live, and I believe that this is part of the meaning of life under the Lordship of Christ — abundant living, fully tragic, happy, deep, searching, moving out.”

The 50 colleges said no. Jim wished he could retire, wished he had money to get away, wished he could get a job in Europe, wished the world recognized his ability and fine mind. He spoke with church officers who talked him out of resigning until my sister had left for Oxford and my brother for Vanderbilt — their “respective fall beginnings.” In August 1961, Grace writes, Jim is “feeling lower than a worm,” but preaching fine sermons. “He is preaching his own search.”

The following year, Jim moves to Jamestown, North Dakota. Grace would not be going.

Memoir

Grace sailed into New York harbor on the unlovable Saturnia — one of three ships arriving that day, bearing some 3,000 passengers from Europe, her customs agent said. He also told her the Ohio State Ltd, leaving at 4 p.m., would bypass Cleveland and thus be the fastest way to get to Springfield. She headed to Grand Central Terminal.

Grace collected her children from her no-doubt-relieved in-laws and drove us to her mother’s apartment in Dallas. We would live with Grandmother until Jim returned — a date not set. What would happen after that, nobody knew. Meanwhile, Grace would enroll the older two in school, I’d stay with Grandmother and Grace would go to work. Assuming she could find a job.

Her letters to Jim blend the routine with notes of tenderness and, toward the end, unsettlement.

A September 22, 1951, letter to a shipboard friend encloses photos that “bring back our good times on that terrible boat. All I have to do to get away from the pressing demands of buying school supplies and new shoes, cooking and washing, is to look at these pictures and go floating back to our ship and smell the good air, watch the sea (calm and blue) and recall all the pleasant, diverting experiences with my boat friends. I thank you most sincerely for being so kind to me, especially for making my surroundings more enjoyable by ‘moving me up in life’ from that hot little hole down below.

“I am looking for a job now and will have to find something soon since my money is running out. The children are settled in school, but each day it seems I have to buy further supplies or new shoes or such like. But we love Dallas and are glad Mother moved here from Houston.”

October 1951 letter to Jim: “You certainly have been wonderful about writing. It does me so much good to find that what you are doing is interesting and rewarding.” She reports that “there were around 40,000 people in the Cotton Bowl last night to hear Dr. Norman V. Peale. His address was lukewarmly challenging but rather trite. I’d much rather have heard Pierre Van Paassen who preached at the 1st Unitarian church yesterday morning. I couldn’t think of any way to take the children and Mother to Sunday School and then go myself clear across the city and come back for them to boot, so I didn’t go.

“Last night as we walked out of the Cotton Bowl amid the throngs of people, into the bright lights of the state fair with the hamburger and candy floss smell, I wished very much that you were there. Then, I knew, we wouldn’t have gone immediately to catch the trolley but would have turned instead to the bright lights of the Midway and walked its long length, stopping whenever anything of interest caught our eyes.

“It’s ten to eleven now; over there it’s nearly 3. It’s hard to move across that much time, isn’t it? Have you had any good chocolate yet? And tell me in some detail about Dr. Jaspers and Karl Barth. We love you and miss you but we are glad you are doing what you want to do.”

November 1951 letter to Jim: “I know you are curious to know what I do in a firm named Nationwide Pictures. The ad appeared in the Dallas Morning News asking for a ‘Mature woman, 30–40, to manage office of motion picture production firm; typing necessary. Knowledge of books, art, music, radio, TV, etc. helpful.’” Her new boss, Mr. Carrington, “is the cameraman for Warner Bros. and Universal Newsreel for this area. He has recently bought a trailer service which makes movie advertising trailers, and this business has started in earnest with the Christmas merchants’ trailers which are being pushed right now. We are getting out around 2000 letters to theater managers all over the south.

“So I have a job partly routine, partly creative, and I like it. He paid me $35 a week to start, when I persuaded him he needed help to clear his desk of some of the pile of work which he had accumulated. At the end of that time he told me he was ‘used to me, liked my work, I was lovely to have around, so stay!” He will now pay me $50 a week, with possible increases if this Trailer Co. proves a good thing.

“I work from 9 to 5, Saturdays to 12. I like the interest, the difference and the money. I am glad I am doing this instead of the Presbyterian Bookstore because I was rather tired of the same thing. This will satisfy the wicked streak in me for something exciting and different and pleasure-loving, maybe! The movie business is certainly different from the cloistered world of religious books, I can say that.” Hmmm…

December 1951: Dearest Jaimi, “I have gotten steadily deeper and deeper in the business. I like the work in almost every way and as far as the salary is concerned, they’ve raised it twice already and will do more, I really believe, as soon as the business warrants. I feel responsibility to it now that they have been so nice and even though I will have to leave sometime, still I can help them get the thing on its feet and going.” On the streetcar, she thinks about contributions she can make. “For example, some Special Trailers are rather rude sounding and say things like ‘The Manager insists that you be QUIET.’ Why not do it more diplomatically, I thought, and so I’ve been writing jingles, which we will illustrate with sound and animation effects.”

Then this momentous shift of topic: “Your nice long letter awaited me when I got home after the conference at First Church. I like everything in it and am so glad you don’t feel as hopeless as you did several places in Europe. I certainly agree that it’s not just on your side — I know mine has caused a lot. But heretofore, unless my memory has failed me utterly, you’ve never even admitted that it was anyone BUT me! I know the children can help us somewhat; but I really hope our own relationship can be better basically.”

March 1952, letter to Jim’s parents: “Since he’s left Basel, we may not get any more letters until he lets us know when he’s coming, as I hope he will. I don’t want the children to miss the thrill of meeting him somewhere, however he plans to come to Dallas. Doesn’t it seem wonderfully immediate to think he’s ‘on the way home’ even if it is still a matter of weeks? We are all so excited at times we can hardly be nicely calm.”

A few days later, on the back of a Nationwide Pictures flier, she typed the kind of note-to-self she used to do more often:

Self-Conscious

Being easily annoyed, or insulted or embarrassed is usually an indication of self-consciousness.

After all, nothing which occurs in the course of a day’s work need be taken ‘personally.’

Every unpleasant occurrence is only part of our regular ‘day’s work’ — to be glossed over pleasantly, and promptly cast from our memory.

There, let us not have our ‘feelings’ too prominently evident.

The next letter is dated six months later and comes from Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Jim is now pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. The file has no record of when and where Jim arrived for us to greet him, or what transpired during what Grace later called the period “while we were sitting out our time in Dallas.”

That a preacher and his wife in 1951, with virtually no money, three young children and no assured future employment, would sell almost everything they have and set off for Europe for three months: Good heavens.

Grace’s letters to their parents throughout the winter of 1950–51 reflect their determination — and the cliffhanger ups and down of their progress. Would Jim get the grant he’d applied for? How long would they stay? Could they take the children? If not, who would? And what would the family do afterward?

In a February 1951 letter to her mother, Grace writes that Jim has heard from the church administrators about possible grants to support his studies. “The amount of the scholarships is $2000-$3000, depending on length and who all goes. If we cared to apply, we could take the family and remain a year for study in one place. We have seriously considered this and rejected it for several reasons. In the first place Geneva is not old enough to appreciate the advantages or get anything out of it; she would be a burden instead of an interested helper, and it would be very hard on her. And since one of our main reasons for going is to travel, see museums, churches, go into back villages and poke around, attend concerts, go by train, bus, bicycle and hiking, we could not be free with the children to do this. So we are making application for just Jim, accompanied for three months by me; he to stay at least six months and perhaps more if money and study holds out. I wish I could stay six months, but I don’t feel that I should go off and leave the children for more than the summer.”

Continuing to unspool to her mother their unsettled prospects, Grace soon writes, “Next fall and winter until Jim returns early in 1952, I will have to live either with the O’s or with you, if either of you will be so kind as to take us in for a few months. I told you that I would much prefer living in Texas during the winter and we certainly want a Southern address because churches in the South are strangely prejudiced against any northern-sounding address when they go to call, except in the very large ones.

“If you would keep Geneva in the mornings, I would try to get a job in a church or office and work half-time in order to help pay my way. Then when Jim returned, we would live somewhere until he had a call or found something to do; this is the only going-out-on-faith part of it all, but we feel that we can always work somewhere and we want to do this badly enough that we are willing to take that chance. So — I’m asking you to consider it all and see whether you want to have that experience (!) next winter. Please feel free to decline. Then I will try the Overholsers and see if they want to put up with us. I want you to feel perfectly free to decide any way you wish. It is your life now to live as you wish.”

What I’d give to have seen my grandmother opening this letter.

It contained one more interesting note: “This evening, Geneva is having fun looking at Kodak pictures. She knows who you are in every one.” The photos featured a trip to Houston the summer before, during which we played with cousins from Port Arthur. One of them, my brother recalls, was a girl about his age named Janis Joplin. (Our grandmothers were sisters.)

These wintertime letters also included Grace’s customary report on cultural highlights. They’d seen “King Solomon’s Mines — one of the most exciting movies I’ve ever seen” and Lauritz Melchior, the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Slavenska Ballet, Oscar Levant and “the Italian picture ‘Bitter Rice.’” All of this available in nearby small towns and cities.

Remarkably, Jim’s parents agreed to keep us (ages 3, 7 and 10) for the summer at their home in Springfield, Ohio. And Grace’s mother agreed to have her and the children in Dallas for the school year to follow.

A letter to Jim’s parents: “I believe the children will be fairly easy to take care of next summer, but there is one thing that bothers me slightly. The washing problem for three children in summer is something you probably haven’t faced since Jim and Alf were small. Think about it very realistically for a few days and then tell me what you think. I will sell my washing machine and then when we start again I’ll probably buy a Sears Kenmore automatic. Would you like to buy one yourself to use this summer, or another type that would be good, and then sell it to me later?”

Things sped toward a close. “Jim will preach his last sermon here the last Sunday in May, one week after he gets back from the Commencement exercises in Richmond.” Grace got a note from the Presbyterian Church Department of Children’s work, thanking her for the ”fine service you have rendered in past years and looking forward to having you work with us again in the very near future.” Also, to Jim’s parents: “I have already packed two boxes of dishes, five of books, have started on our clothes which is a problem what with determining things Jim and I will need this summer, the children this summer and next winter, Jim next winter and us next winter. Incidentally, do you want me to bring any blankets or sheets? Say the word. I plan to bring the typewriter, iron and pressure cooker. We have already sold the piano, dining room furniture, water heater, washing machine, baby bed, youth bed, two living room tables and porch furniture.”

Meanwhile, their travel agent couldn’t get them on the boat she’d promised, but found another and booked that, along with hotel rooms in London and Paris. A decision on Jim’s grant is overdue by more than a week: “We have expected a call, a wire, or some word, every hour. It was the worst suspense I’ve gone through in many a day.” But “in spite of this unknown UNKNOWN, Jim decided he must tell the Session Sunday April 22, to meet the church’s requirements.”

Then: In an April 29 letter to her mother, “You will be disappointed to hear that Jim did not receive the grant. Maybe for one of three reasons: his age; the size of this church which the man came here and saw; and probably the most important one, the fact that Jim is taking me along and we plan to travel for three months — perhaps they figured he could leave me at home and afford to pay for his own study. But, Dr. Blakely wrote that the Board of Education (not the foundation, which might have given him $2500) was giving him $750 which he said was small but might help a little. Indeed it does, and since we have never had miracles in our lives yet we really hadn’t expected this too much and therefore aren’t torn up.”

Miracle or no miracle, Grace and Jim packed their family into the car the day after school ended. They drove to Springfield, dropped their children off and boarded a train to New York. At 11:30 AM, June 1, 1951, they sailed from Pier 2 in Hoboken aboard the SS Homeland. Grace’s mother flew up to see them off.

The next letter comes from their new home in Greenwood, South Carolina (they’d been in Texarkana for 2½ years). January 1947: “Jim was properly and legally installed by the Presbytery commission last night and it was an inspiring and meaningful service. I sang the contralto solo in ‘Hark, Hark My Soul!’ yesterday morning, and people were very kind to say how nice for the preacher to have a wife who could sing!”

The family moved temporarily to Richmond for the summer, with Jim continuing to pursue his doctorate. Grace typed a note to herself: “A conglomeration of reading which has produced a strange mixture of thoughts has been my program for this 10 days or so we have been here at Union Seminary. ‘Your Carriage, Madam! A Guide to Good Posture,’ ‘Modern Parents,’ ‘The Psychology of Christian Living’ and a book on Reaching Maturity.“ As a result, I have had many unconnected thoughts held together only by one dominating idea— self-improvement ideals.”

Among these ideals, Grace wants to develop a “more smooth, graceful walking and sitting posture” and to remember that “an envious person is one who has not lived his life to its fullest.” But most of her reflections concern her interior struggles as a mother, a wife, a woman. “Looking back over this past year, I find myself filled with dismay at the way I have gradually fallen from my high aspirations in regard to the bringing up of our sweet daughter. The coming of Brubba has decreased the amount of time I had to give to introspection, and has, more than that, taken up my time to such an extent that I have struggled to be calm and patient and objective. I have lost perspective, too, and cannot often look at anything dispassionately.

“Jim and I very seldom discuss the children’s actions or our attitudes toward their actions before them, but we have been guilty, and I hope now that we can refrain from it altogether. And in matters that have to be decided, I must try to remember to defer to him at the moment. Later, perhaps, I can explain my position, and perhaps change the feeling for a later decision when it comes.”

Turning to a yet more painful (to me, reading it now) sentiment: “After observing some of the other women here, and some of the men also, I have reached several conclusions. I think men do not like to hear women talk very much, especially in a group, and I find myself feeling the same way. Yet, if she has something to say, and says it in a fairly intelligent way, without prolonging it, or using too many unnecessary gestures or repetitions, they will accept and admire. The moral, I guess, is to keep my mouth shut unless I can say something that is acceptable. And think before I speak — always, always.

“If there were only some way to avoid the few things which upset Jim so, I believe our married life would be a model of connubial bliss. Spending money in any way that seems to him useless or extravagant, even though it may not seem so to me, is perhaps the worst of all. I realize the only way toremedy it is to cease to want anything that I think he will be upset about paying for. He is not the least bit niggardly, but his conceptions of the way to spend the money we have do not include blowing it all on an odd meal, which though different may not be outstandingly good.”

Then, this textbook self-admonishment: “If I can remember to be calmer and quieter, and try to be neutral and detached, I believe I can produce a better atmosphere in our home. I know I am inclined to be positive and assertive and too quick, but if I can only keep my mouth closed until I know what is best, I believe everything will be calmer in the long run. Even though I hate to be stepped on, the upheaval which any protest produces is surely not worth it. And, object as violently as I will, still it is the woman’s place and responsibility to produce that complacency of spirit in a home which makes for the happiness of all therein. A man will not strive to do it, simply because he doesn’t know. I guess I can think of that as my career — to avoid any situations which may cause trouble, either for Jim or for the children.”

To think of that as her career.

Letter to her parents, September 1947, reporting on a church leadership meeting she went to in Columbia, S.C.: “The church here is strong, filled with fine people (I am speaking of the state as well as our own) but is certainly not the most forward-looking or aggressive section. Rather, I think it ranks with Mississippi as being the two states addicted to keeping the Presbyterian Church as it was 50 years ago. They don’t favor expansion. Complacency is rampant, and it’s all the worse because it is of the most pleasant sort.”

Grace’s third child (that’s me) is born in March 1948. In a letter to her sister in May she writes: “This is the first baby I’ve been able to nurse. She is happy and smiles and laughs a great deal. I’ve been lucky with this one as with the others and weigh what I did before she came. I have been amused lately by the comments which come about ‘How did you get back your figure so quickly?’ and ‘You must feel good to look like that after three children.’ You know how I smirk and pat myself on the back!”

Grace’s father dies of cancer in September. In November 1948, Grace writes to her mother, recalling the last Thanksgiving when the McSpadden family had all been together: “I remember quite vividly that Thanksgiving day in 1936 when we were all seated around your table heaped with good things and Daddy felt moved to make a ‘little speech’ in his quiet way. ‘This may be the last Thanksgiving dinner we will have all together, children. Here Grace is taking her wings out for her flight away from the family nest. Later you others will be doing the same.’ Then he went on to point out how much family life means and how fortunate we were to have had so much good experience in that way. We all felt sad but encouraged and we closed it by having each one of us give a prayer of thanksgiving with hands clasped around the table.

“He was right; it was the last Thanksgiving. And now, 13 years later, I can think of a major happening for almost every year since then. Seven grandchildren, 2 deaths, 4 marriages, numberless moves on the part of all, new friends, different ties — yet all of these do not dim the meaning and sacredness of that fine day when we sat together as the McSpadden family. Although it won’t ever come again, the memory is fine and strong and challenging; and I’m glad he was prescient enough to see where we were going and to say what he did.”